Values Sermon Illustrations

Values Sermon Illustrations

'Rabbi! begone! Thy Powers
Bring loss to us and ours:
Our ways are not as Thine—
Thou lovest men—we, swine.
Oh get Thee gone, Omnipotence, and take this fool of Thine!
His soul? What care we for his soul? Since we have lost our swine.'
The Christ went sadly: He had wrought for them a sign
Of love and tenderness divine—
They wanted swine!
Christ stands without your door and gently knocks,
But if your gold or swine the entrance blocks,
He forces no man's hold, He will depart
And leave you to the treasures of your heart.—John Oxenham

(Mark 5. 15-18)

"The trouble with father," said the gilded youth, "is that he has no idea of the value of money."

"You don't mean to imply that he is a spendthrift?"

"Not at all. But he puts his money away and doesn't appear to have any appreciation of all the things he might buy with it."

An American girl who married a Bavarian baron enjoyed playing Lady Bountiful among the tenants on her husband's estate. On the death of the wife of one of the cottagers, she called to condole with the bereaved widower. She uttered her formal expressions of sympathy with him in his grief over the loss of his wife, and she was then much disconcerted by his terse optimistic comment: